Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Where do we go from here? Depending on one’s perspective, the American story can plausibly be interpreted in different ways. Looked at from past to present , we can see a great deal of continuity from medieval Christendom and the Reformation to America’s founding. The War for Independence, after all,…
Click HERE for Part 1 Civic Religion: American or Christian? We have already traced out the basic contours of the shift in America from an ecclesiocentric, theocratic social order to a secular one. Building on Locke and Hobbes, the Enlightenment accomplished an astonishing coup of Christendom. That victory for the…
Author’s Introductory Note: Engaging in broad historical interpretation as I am about to do is always risky. Necessarily, one “stylizes” history by simplifying, over generalizing, and stereotyping. But the narrative qualities of history are not simply due to the imposition of human rationality upon brute facts; rather history is always…
A. Repentance to life involves endeavoring to believe real hard that you’re saved. reject infant baptism. stop watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. walk with God in all the ways of his commandments. B. What is necessary so that no sinner may expect to be forgiven unless he does it? Only…
The machine works mechanically and it is flawless. Slander/libel a group of Presbyterian ministers as “Romanist” because robes and James 2 are no worse than praying to Mary or relying on purgatory to pay for unconfessed sins. Drive off anyone who disagrees. Of that number, there may be a tiny…
If we take as a starting point the Tribal / Monarchical / Empire model, we can then add to it the Late Empire Phase. The particular ‘marker sin’ of Empire is false intermarriage, which signifies pluralism and syncretism. Empires by definition are “cosmopolitan” dominated by cities, high culture, many cultures,…
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Margaret Garber points out that Arden, the name of the forest in As You Like It , is also the maiden name of Shakespeare’s mother, “so it is arguable that some nostalgia for childhood would double the geographical place with a psychological, or at least a remembered, place of ideal…
Rusty Reno’s discussion of nature and grace ( The Ordinary Transformed ) is not so satisfying as Jenson’s. Reno says that theology’s challenge is to explain the real relationship between nature and grace without detaching them or conflating them. Too intimate a relationship “implies a partnership between the ordinary and…
In the second volume of his systematic theology, Robert Jenson summarizes and critiques de Lubac’s theology of nature and grace. He agrees with de Lubac’s conclusion that the supernatural is not owed to nature because “the reverse in the case.” Quoting de lubac: “Nature . . . owes itself to…
Ward quotes Rosalind’s line, “Say a day, without the ever,” and asks, “Did Shakespeare know he had used all five vowels, and with such symmetrical elegance that the first two, appearing three times each, neatly surround the remaining three in correct order within: a-a-a-i-o-u-e-e-e?” He suspects not, but then observes…
AL Rowse counted some 25 references to the Cain and Abel story in Shakespeare’s plays. As You Like It has two - Duke Senior and Frederick, Oliver and Orlando. And there’s Hamlet Sr and Claudius, Edgar and Edmund, Prospero and his usurping brother. Not to mention all the brother-like rivalries…
In his introduction to As You Like It , John Powell Ward free associates on the Forest of Arden, to good effect: “Arden, garden, Garden of Eden (and Adam), ardent, Mary Arden, Arden in Warwickshire, the Ardennes in France - there are many leads into what is suggested. Despite the…
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